Remote-control flying vehicles are becoming increasingly popular and sophisticated. While larger craft such as military and civilian drone aircraft have been in use for only the last two decades, smaller radio-controlled flying vehicles built and flown by hobbyists have been around for much longer. Generally, remote-control flying vehicles are either fixed wing, like a plane, or hovering, like a helicopter or quadcopter.
One example of a small, hovering type craft is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,931,239, titled “Homeostatic Flying Hovercraft,” incorporated herein by reference, which describes the use of a homeostatic hover control system in combination with a hand-held controller to cause the craft to mimic the orientation of the controller in terms of yaw, pitch, roll, and lateral flight maneuvers. Another example of a quadcopter is the Parrot AR Drone that utilizes a Wi-Fi connection between the quadcopter and a smart phone or tablet that serves as a tilt-based remote control. Still another example is the Walkera QR Lady Bird mini-quadcopter that is controlled via a conventional dual joystick remote control. These kinds of electronically stabilized hovercraft or quadcopter designs with three or more separate rotors are generally more stable and easier to learn to fly than the single-shaft, dual counter-rotating rotor, model helicopters that may use some form of mechanical gyro stabilization. Like the Lady Bird mini-quadcopter, these less-expensive single-shaft, dual counter-rotating rotor, model helicopters are typically controlled via a conventional dual joystick remote control.
Other types of control systems for remote control have also been described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,200,375 (describes spring-return control for RF controller for hovering-type remote control craft), and U.S. Pat. No. 8,049,600 (describes spread spectrum RF controller with force feedback for remote control craft, each of which is incorporated herein by reference). While these types of control systems address various issues with RF communications, and can provide additional control feedback for a user, none of these approaches have addressed control problems that are unique to the implementation of multiplayer, multi-team gaming with remote control flying craft. Typically, the above-described devices operate in a proprietary radio frequency (RF) protocol only between the particular controller and the device it controls. It is therefore difficult, if not impossible, to add additional devices. Different frequency or protocol-enabled “A” version and “B” versions must often be purchased.
There is need for a robust and fully-featured wireless communication system that can support game play among multiple remote-control flying craft, as well as other devices and accessories that may be used as part of the game play.